A Primer of the Gaza War
Two wars destroyed Biden's presidency. Here's a brief account of the second one.
Another Time, More Death
In March 1622 the English colonists of Virginia had been at peace with Tsenacomoco—That’s what the Powhatan natives called their chiefdom—ever since the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas in 1614. But Pocahontas died in 1617 on a visit to England, and her father, King Powhatan himself,1 who had made the peace, died a year later. Under his successor, Opitchapam, opinions darkened on the English. So Opechencanough, Opitchapam’s brother or kinsman,2 planned and led… well, let’s turn the story over to English survivor, Anthony Chester.
When the day appointed had arrived, a number of the savages visited many of our people in their dwellings, and while partaking with them of their meal the savages, at a given signal, drew their weapons and fell upon us murdering and killing everybody they could reach sparing neither women nor children, as well inside as outside the dwellings. In this attack 347 of the English of both sexes and all ages were killed. Simply killing our people did not satisfy their inhuman nature, they dragged the dead bodies all over the country, tearing them limb from limb, and carrying the pieces in triumph around.3
Virginia had numbered over 1200 colonists the day before, so the Powhatan manage to wipe out more than 25% of the English-speaking population in one attack.4 Casualties would have been higher but some Christianized natives warned friends in Jamestown, so that city was spared.
This launched the Second Anglo-Powhatan War. There were changes in alliances by the Accomac and Patawomeck, an attempt to assassinate Opechencanough at a peace negotiation after sedating him with poisoned wine, and a battle near Openchencanough’s home village of Pamunkey in 1623 in which the Powhatans retreated, plus regular summer raids by the English to seize corn and burn fields, but after ten years both sides made peace. No copy of the treaty has come down to us,5 but we know that there were no humiliating conditions, indemnities, or territorial concessions by Tsenacomoco.6
A Third Anglo-Powhatan War followed from 1644-1646 that began with yet another massacre planned and led by Opechencanough, who by this time had become paramount chief.7 He was in his 90s now, and whether it was a side effect of the poison wine, a degenerative disease, or old age heightened by literary hyperbole, accounts state he was carried on a litter with warriors always nearby to lift his eyelids without which he could not see. The initial attack killed more English than the 1622 attack, but by then the English were far more numerous, and the young, energetic Governor William Berkeley captured Opechencanough, and the Powhatan sued for peace under their latest and last paramount chief Necotowance.8
The text of this treaty has come down to us. The Powhatans cede land, promise good intentions, and declare Powhatan ‘kings’ to derive their authority from the British king.9 Tsenacomoco effectively was annexed into Virginia. In the ensuing decades Tsenacomoco itself dissolved, each village werowance and weronsqua no longer deferring to one another but directly answerable to the Virginia governor. Augmented and reaffirmed by another treaty in 1677, this treaty is legally still in force. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes still control portions of their ancestral lands and bring fresh game meat in tribute once a year to the Virginia governor.
Flash forward 400 years
In October of 2023 the Israelis for the first in their history were set to normalize relations with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This would effectively bring the Sunni countries into alliance against Iran and bury the issue of Israel’s treatment of Arab-speaking Muslims and Christians living in Israel and the territories under Israeli military occupation. One of these soon-to-be-forgotten territories was the Gaza Strip, a 140-square mile open-air prison on the Mediterranean coast between Israel and Egypt, crammed with over two million people, mostly descendants of refugees driven from their homes by Jewish-Israeli armies during Israeli’s War of Independence in 1947 and 1948.10
Since 2006 Gaza had been governed by Hamas, a militant group funded by Israel to weaken the more internationally-supported group Fatah.11 Hamas had tried to break out of Gaza through protests, pressure, violence, and negotiations without success for years. In 2023 with the normalization of relations looming two leaders of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar and Mohamed Deif, planned and launched what they called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Under the cover of a sudden massive rocket barrage on October 7th Hamas fighters breached the border using motorcycles, boats, trucks, and powered paragliders. They attacked Israeli military targets and kidnapped Israelis from homes, kibbutzes, and even a music festival. In the battles and ensuing chaos 1,195 Israelis were killed, including 815 civilians, and 251 Israelis were taken back into the tunnels of Gaza as hostages.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—which had been warned of an impending attack and either discounted it or allowed it (assuming it would be a minor raid that would give Netanyahu an excuse to retaliate)—responded with an all-out invasion of Gaza. This quickly turned into an orgy of revenge, bombing Gazan hospitals, universities, schools, and apartment complexes, assassinating Gazan civilians, journalists, teachers, and children wholesale—including many who were critics of Hamas.
As Israel descended more fully into what most of the world saw as fascism, genocide and/or ethnic cleansing, sympathy turned to discomfort, disgust, and finally revulsion. Israel was brought before the International Court of Justice, which ordered an immediate ceasefire (ignored by Israel and the U.S.), and in November the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif, essentially equating the Israeli leaders with Hamas.12
When Israel invaded Gaza, Hezbollah, a Shiite militia ruling Southern Lebanon, and the Houthis, a Shiite militia ruling Yemen, began firing rockets. Hezbollah does not have the military capacity to actually invade Israeli, but they targeted Northern Israeli cities with enough rockets for the Israeli government to evacuate residents and board them in Tel Aviv hotels where they’ve been waiting to return home for a year. Houthis have even less offensive capacity, but they targeted ships in the Persian Gulf flying the flags of countries that do business with Israel causing serious economic harm. In response Israel has attacked Iran from which Hezbollah and the Houthis get their rockets, blowing up an Iranian embassy, possibly assassinating the Iranian president, and assassinating a visiting official attending the swearing in of the replacement president.
The U.S. Navy immediately went to Israel’s defense against the Houthis but keeping ships on duty is enormously expensive compared to firing a few rockets. Israel meanwhile invaded Lebanon, or tried to. They weren’t able to get far but bombed enough civilians for the Lebanese government to negotiate a ceasefire with Hezbollah (that Israel has already violated extensively) leaving Israel a free hand in Gaza. Israel exchanged missile volleys with Iran but that has so far petered out.13
Meanwhile Israel, the U.S., and Turkey have begun bombing Syria and supporting militant Sunni takfiri fanatics14 to try and overthrown Syria’s Shiite government. Israel is doing this because Syria is the route of Iranian weapons transfers to Hezbollah (and possibly as a place to dump Palestinian refugees?).
What Will Happen?
As far as the military outcome for Israel, it’s not really in doubt. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are the Powhatan, who outnumbered the English many times over in 1622. (And the Powhatan still didn’t win.) Neither Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen, nor Iran have the ability to invade Israel and thus actually threaten Israel’s existence in any substantial way. Likewise the Israelis, unlike the colonial English, have unlimited military and financial support from abroad (from us).
It’s odd that Virginia, which was literally an English colony, never got a fraction of the military support from England that Israel gets from the U.S. today. Even the times when Virginia did get military assistance from England—during Bacon’s rebellion in 1675 and the French and Indian War in 1755—the colonists were expected to pay for it. Israel not only doesn’t pay America much of what the military support costs; it receives massive financial aide from the U.S. on top of it. This is why Israel can wage war against Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen all at once and survive economically with half a million of its citizens fleeing abroad, the Northern portion of its territory depopulated, and enormous numbers of its young unable to work because they’re serving in the Israeli Defense Force.
So there’s little chance Israel can lose these wars in the sense that Hamas or even Hezbollah can lose a war. In a year or three there will be some American-negotiated ceasefire/peace with Israel occupying all its current territory plus some part of Gaza and possibly a demilitarized zone along the Lebanese border. America will pay for the rebuild, Israel will claim victory, and the supporters of international law will pound sand.
For the time being.
But winning in this way in the short term essentially guarantees losing in the long term. There’s no end game. In forty years or so (perhaps as soon as twenty, perhaps as distant as seventy) it’s unlikely there will be an Israel as a nation-state of the Jewish people.
There aren’t enough Jewish people. The conquest of the North American continent by the people we now call Americans was possible because there was an unlimited supply of the people we now call Americans. The Powhatan could only increase their numbers by birth, marriage, or conquest. The English could increase their numbers by birth, marriage, conquest, immigration, and conversion. Like Great Britain, France, Dar al Islam or ancient Rome the United States can turn enemies into subjects or citizens. What is now Israel was founded as a Jewish settlement project under British Auspices after WWI at a time when the Western powers believed if every ethnic group had its own country peace would reign forever. Except it didn’t. Most of the world today understands that in practice government by Marxist theory doesn’t work very well. If only half as many could see that governments by ethnicity doesn’t work very well either. There will never be enough Jewish people in the world for Israel to be secure on an ethnic basis. And Israeli Jews are far too racist to welcome the conversion of Palestinian Arabs for Israel to be secure on a religious basis.
Israel has become entirely dependent upon US money and weapons. At some point the U.S. will not be able to maintain worldwide, economic and military dominance. The U.S. Navy won’t rule the seas uncontested because it won’t be able to afford it. Arguably, we can’t afford it now. Supporting Israel while it exacts vengeance on everyone around it will only hasten that withdrawal and Israel’s isolation.
Good politics is unifying allies and dividing enemies. Remember on the eve of the Hamas attack how Israel was about to normalize relations that would split Egypt and Saudi Arabia forever away from Iran? Now almost the entire Middle East is united against Israel and the U.S. The Gulf States are even backing Syria, very much a traditional enemy. Plus Israel and the U.S. have managed to create a real alliance between China, Russia, and Iran. We’ve alienated everyone. It won’t matter in the near future but those ties will continue to strengthen in the decades ahead.
Battle of Kosovo Effect. In the 14th century Serbians lost a battle to the Ottoman Turks. Five hundred years later the Serbians took out the caskets and paraded them around before embarking on the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. Memories are long. Very long. In twenty, forty, seventy years Israel—after the U.S. has withdrawn from the region—will lose battles and all its neighbors will bring out the memories of the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, before embarking on their own slaughter. Israel has had almost a century of military dominance during which it could have made a lasting peace with its neighbors, but it barely even tried. Certainly, it always expected its enemies to give up more than it did. For centuries to come any Muslim or Arab nation can claim spiritual association with the martyred dead of Gaza whenever it benefits them.
Shoah Delay. I was rewatching the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers the other night, and noticed the final episode Why We Fight included the liberation of a concentration camp. This centrality of the Holocaust in how Americans see WWII and how the American Jewish community sees itself took decades, as more and more information came into the public square. In much of the world, slowly, inexorably, the next several decades will be defined by the steady revelation of the horrors Israel committed in Gaza. And unlike the atrocities committed in the 1940s, much more of it is on video. Even if Israel stopped assassinations, civilian killing, and ethnic cleansing today—and that’s not likely—the horror of its actions over the last year will continue to come to light for decades.
So Israel is set for a century of conflict.
Alliances can always be (probably should always be) based on self-interest but of what use is Israel to its neighbors? It simply doesn’t have a self-identity that allows it to convert enemies into friends—or to even imagine that such a thing is possible. It’s stuck appealing to justice, ethnicity, and fear.
Frontiers versus Settler Colonialism
From 1622 up until the time just before I was born, most English accounts of the Anglo-Powhatan Wars viewed the 1622 and 1644 massacres as monstrous. But in my lifetime—influenced especially by books like Dan Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—the black and white hats switched, and many would view the Powhatan attack as heroic, while the slaughtered English were getting what was coming to them. The massacres were a reaction to earlier English provocations. Some critics of Israel, including Hamas and its supporters, view Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in this way, and I expect a century from now that will be the general view, but most critics of Israel only accuse the country of going too far when responding to Hamas. Effectively becoming what they hate. The accusations by the ICJ and ICC, Israeli complaints notwithstanding, are of this nature.
But why is Israel going too far? I’ve read countless views that this is because of an ideology of “settler colonialism,” the original sin of Western Nations by which their imperialism leads to the killing. Israel can’t help it. They’re infected with the ideology of settler colonialism.
I started this post with the account of settlers in the colony of Virginia because I want to punch a hole in the notion that populations acting in vengeance, hubris, impunity—nations plunging into fascism—are doing so because they were founded as settler colonies.
Actual colonists are not necessarily less ruthless or cruel than contemporary Israelis. They would feel no remorse killing natives and stealing their land. Actual frontier societies aren’t morally superior. But unlike contemporary Israelis the frontier people I’ve read about—settlers and natives—tend to be not just ruthless, but also pragmatic. That’s what frontiers are about, individuals on the make, trying to survive, abandoning the constraints of the places they came from, trying to get rich, trying to beat the system. Actual settlers in the colony of Virginia would as soon marry a Powhatan as kill one, trade as steal, and pledge an alliance as wage a war. I don’t want to romanticize or praise the frontier; I’m just stating that the frontier of Virginia wasn’t much like what the Israelis are doing today.
Even the West Bank Israelis, who are technically settlers, seem more like a mix of NIMBY reactionary suburbanites and entitled religious fanatics than anything someone would find on a frontier. Actual settler colonists just don’t practice settler colonialism. Fighting wars in all directions at once, becoming dependent on weapon suppliers, expending resources killing when it accomplishes nothing—actual colonists in settlements don’t behave this way.15
Israel’s problem isn’t settler colonialism. If Israel were actually settler colonialist, they might well succeed, but Israel is driven by the impunity of American support, outrage at being attacked (not fear), and a more familiar ideology, the success record of which is far lower than settler colonialism. Countries have managed to last a long time under fascist governments, but only if they stayed out of wars, and in the Middle East that would be difficult even if Israel were far saner than it is.
So like all nation states when they become mad with vengeance and war, Israel will pay a terrible price down the road. They would have already if not for American support. Of course Israel thinks they will be different. All nation states when they become mad with vengeance and war think they will be different. None ever are.
Biden’s End
So last we come to Joe Biden and his sad doomed presidency. He began with high hopes of bringing the factions of the party together and ended with his party out of power, democracy in disarray—due to his failure to step down in time for a primary—his rival president again, and two catastrophic wars for which he will be forever cursed.
Most Americans don’t follow foreign policy closely. If they had been happier at home they wouldn’t have cared who Biden supported abroad, but when a president is unpopular and seems out of touch, his aimlessness and weakness regarding foreign wars undermines any respect or trust citizens have in him.
And rightly so. Biden could have stopped Benjamin Netanyahu at any time simply by refusing to send more weapons, but lacked the competency or character to do so. Would a saner Middle policy have hurt is reelection changes? No, but pretending it did, once he dropped out he could have stopped the weapons. Would that have hurt Harris? No, but pretending it did, once the election was lost, he could have stopped the weapons. Biden has always declared that he was a Zionist, but no president has ever given any foreign country unconditional support in this way. In Israel’s formative years when its survival might have been at stake U.S. presidents didn’t give unconditional support. Biden’s support for Netanyahu will hasten the decline of the U.S. military dominance upon which Israel has come to depend which makes Israel’s survival far less likely.
Biden was photographed the other day leaving a bookstore carrying a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. The author was later quoted as saying, “Four years too late.” Because Israel’s actions in Gaza will be rehashed for the next several generations, Biden’s unwillingness to stop that cruelty—even when he had nothing to lose—will come to carry the symbolic shame that Neville Chamberlain’s preemptive surrender at Munich. If the latter was in a sense the end of the British Empire, Biden’s actions are the end of the American Empire.
Maybe even the end of more than that. Think how much Judaism changed after the fall of ancient Kingdom of Judah. Think how much Judaism changed again after the fall of the Hasmoneans, Herodians and the Second Temple. What will Judaism become when Israel falls—especially if Israel blows up the Dome of the Rock or sets off nukes as it collapses? What will that mean to Christianity and Islam which are founded on an image of Judaism?
Thanks for reading Blame Cannon!
Paramount chief Wahunsenacah was called King Powhatan by the English and seems to have used some Powhatan version of that among his own people, as well as various other throne and ceremonial names.
Tsenacommacah was ruled by a paramount chief (“mamanatowick”) supported by other leaders called werowances who were identified as “brothers.” They might have been actual brothers, or more likely half-brothers, or possibly cousins, or fictive “blood brothers” who became brothers as part of the ritual of rulership. For classics geeks the contrasting use of mamanatowick and werowance brings to mind Homer’s contrasting use of anax and basileus.
Voyage of Anthony Chester published in 1707.
The Powhatan population was about 10,000 to 15,000.
A lot of colonial Virginia records were destroyed during the Civil War two hundred and fifty years later when courthouses were burned.
The war radically changed English society, however. The Virginia Company of London was dissolved, and it would be many centuries before Americans would again trust corporations in place of government. A palisade was built across the “Virginia Peninsula;” and the colonial war leaders would feed their servants and slaves on the annual corn raids so their operations at home could focus on tobacco. In this way, using their access to land and government, they become major planters of a type who would come to dominate the South for the next two centuries.
We don’t know when or how Opitchapam passed away.
Opechencanough died in captivity, shot by his jailer in Jamestown. I’ve wondered if Berkeley had intended to send him back to England in chains to stand trial and decided it was more humane to kill him to spare him the trip. In any case after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675 Berkeley was sent to England in chains to stand trial.
This is ironic given that the English Civil War was ablaze, and in June the army of the current British king, Charles I, had been decisively defeated by the rebel Parliament’s New Model Army. King Charles would be executed in 1649. Governor Berkeley was an ardent royalist, however, and would eventually resign his governorship but not before accepting a lot of royalist escapees to the colony. Since supporters of the king were nicknamed “cavaliers” this became a nickname for Virginia gentry, and eventually a mascot for a certain local university. This is even more ironic given that the founder of that university was one of the most anti-royalists in Virginia—and American—history.
About the names for the region: Palestine is the Greek word. It’s derived from the Philistines (Ph was pronounced P+H, not F by the Greeks) who were the coastal people the Greeks first encountered. Israel comes from the name of the Northern kingdom conquered and ethnically cleansed by the Assyrians. (The “Ten Lost Tribes.”) Jew comes from Judah, the Southern kingdom often opposed to Israel, but conquered by the Babylonians when they conquered the Assyrians. The Babylonians didn’t ethnically cleanse Judah; but they took the ruling classes to Babylon as hostages of sorts. A lot of Israelite writings ended up in Judah and were included in the books of the bible composed during and after the “Babylonian Captivity” as the Persians conquered Babylon and allowed Jews and other subject peoples to have limited self-government. After Alexander the Great conquered the Persians and then died there was a power vacuum during which the Jews created a small kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty which morphed into the Herodian dynasty under the Romans and later into a Roman province called Judea. By now the Hebrew language we defunct except for religious use and everyone was speaking Aramaic or Greek. Judea rebelled (as much against itself as against the Romans but that’s a long story) and the Romans crushed the rebellion and exiled the Jewish ruling classes and renamed the province Palaestina using their version of the Greek name. With the priests gone the common people gradually converted to Christianity, and after the Muslim conquests in the 7th century gradually converted to Islam. By the 10th century Aramaic and Greek were defunct and everyone was speaking Arabic. The vast majority of Arabic speakers are no more descended from Arabs than the vast majority of Aramaic speakers were descended from the Syrians (That’s where Aramaic originated). Zion was originally a hill in Jerusalem that became a poetic term for all of Jerusalem and by extension Judah and Judaism. Zionists were Jewish nationalists starting in the 19th century who hoped to create a Jewish ethnostate, like the other nationalist movements of the time. The “Arab” Muslims and Christians of the areas controlled by the Israeli government call themselves Palestinians. Ironically, many Jews are believed to be descendants of converts to Judaism throughout the Roman Empire and beyond, while many “Palestinians” are descendants of the actual ancient Hebrews. But that’s not how humans see things.
Fatah was the political descendant of the Palestinian Liberation Organization led for years by Yassir Arafat. They were the major political power in the occupied West Bank, and their inability to protect the rights of Arab-speaking Christians and Muslims there and in Gaza led to the popularity of Hamas. The international community wanted a Two-State Solution to the occupation: Israel next to a Palestinian state governed by Fatah. Netanyahu supported Hamas to keep the Palestinians split, and lessen pressure for a two-state solution.
Deif is allegedly dead from an airstrike in July. The ICJ is rooted in the United Nations, whose rulings are allegedly binding to all members, while the ICC was founded by a separate treaty process of which the U.S., Israel, and Russia are not signatories. However, the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. is a signatory, so that in theory gives the ICC jurisdiction to arrest an Israeli.
Iran has missile defenses provided by Russia and Israel has missile defenses provided by the U.S. The Biden administration while being very pro-Israeli seems to have tried to mitigate tensions with Iran, but Trump’s people are even more pro-Israeli and fanatically anti-Iranian to boot. So don’t expect any of this to get better.
Remember ISIS? Sometimes called ISIL or in its Arabic acronym Daesh. A recreation of that is basically who Israel, Turkey, and the U.S. are backing now in Syria. Note that ISIS never attacked Israel, which has led to rumors that it was always some sort of Israeli asset. Certainly the US under Obama admitting to allowing ISIS to spread into Syria in order to weaken the Assad regime. But this is way over my pay grade.
I can see Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel somewhat in this vein, with his ethnic cleansing having an end game unlike Netanyahu’s which is more tantrum-like.